


Jus In Bello

by skyline



Series: Violent Delights Have Violent Ends [2]
Category: Big Time Rush (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 10:17:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12628827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyline/pseuds/skyline
Summary: Without Kendall, the air in Verona smells strange. Stale. Like he wrapped the breezes coming in off the coastline around his shoulders and carried them off to Mantua.





	Jus In Bello

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thilia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thilia/gifts).



“I’m going to work,” Carlos said, his smile quick and brilliant. “Save me some leftovers.”

“Not on your life, jackass,” Logan called back, and he was laughinglaughing _laughing_. It echoes in James’s ears, even now, above the thunder-lightning-crash of the waves on the shore.

Kendall will never forgive James for failing to protect them.

But Kendall left and things changed so quickly. Quickly, quickly, until now; this abrupt halt. Everything is ending.

James kicks at the ocean. It breaks against his foot, water flooding inside his boot. Squishy and cold.

Without Kendall, the air in Verona smells strange. Stale. Like he wrapped the breezes coming in off the coastline around his shoulders and carried them off to Mantua.

Hearing his voice again on the phone was a punch to the gut. All the other sounds in the universe cut out, and Kendall was the only thing he could focus on. Oh, but it was a stupid mistake. A necessary warning, but.

James paid so dearly for it.

He toes further into the sea salt, churned foam and leather sticking tight to his legs. It’s not the most pleasant sensation, but he’ll never have it again.

He’ll never have anything.

Still, he’s had so much. So much, that he’s so thankful for.

Kendall Knight, his smile a razor’s edge, his eyes the green of the sea on a storm-tossed day. He is all that James could have asked for, prayed for, wanted.

He coughs, hacks, sand and blood, and this awful certainty rooted inside him. Who he is, who they are. This world could never have born it. But…

Break his bones and black his eyes, cross his heart, knowing soon he’ll die, James can’t regret Kendall. He won’t.

Even if it wasn’t always perfect. At times, it was too big, too epic, too much, all at the same time. Loving someone isn’t supposed to make you feel like you’ve punctured a lung, but that’s how James lived his life. He could never breathe, and his ribcage was coated in a thin layer of ice.

Until Kendall smiled, and then it was like he overdosed on oxygen.

James coughs again, red thick and splattered on his hand. The water slaps against his waist, his stomach. The bruises under his shirt.

Maybe in a different life, James is someone else. He doesn’t have the ghost of ash in his throat, fire in his lungs, the taste of salt, sweat, women on his lips.

In that other universe, James Diamond never has occasion to realize he is desperately in love with his best friend.

But in this one, he’s beyond all recognition, tangled up in nightmares lit with off-white explosions and the hue of Kendall’s eyes. Nightmares and love and terror and love – it’s all mixed up, right? He doesn’t even know how that happened.

Falling for Kendall wasn’t something James _did_. It’s just how things have always been.

He can’t remember their first meeting, but James will swear that’s when it started. Between one blink and the next, he was besotted, lost. _Destroyed_.

“Do you know what that’s like?” He asks the air. His voice is scratchy and rough. It barely sounds like him, and the wind carries the words away.

He doubles over, the pain in his chest close to ending him.

Who knew a gunshot wound could hurt so badly? Bullets are so small, but they tear through a person. They are iron ore and fire.

The horizon blurs sunset colors and ocean deep. It taunts him.

It’s safety, but it’s not.

The difference between hope and illusions isn’t exactly a cut and dry line here. James snorts.

What’s strange is…He’s been waking up afraid for longer than he can even remember now, hiding behind leather and gun oil and the bravado of a young god, hoping against hope no one will notice how fragile it all is. But now, he can be done. He’s knee deep in the water and he can feel them behind him; currents at his calves, birds of prey at his back.

He can stop being afraid, because the worst thing that can happen is about to.

He isn’t able to stop, though. Not really.

“Let’s go,” he tells Dak.

No, not Dak.

Dak is dead. Kendall killed Dak. This is someone in a uniform, like Dak. Someone with dimples and militia brass, the juxtaposition of sweetness disconcerting on someone who is so damn evil. This is one more person in a whole city full of them who hates James for no reason, for a feeling, for his heart.

James’s hands aren’t red anymore – the seawater washed the blood from his lungs away. But he can still see his veins in his palms, the way they run up his wrist and disappear beneath the thicker skin of his forearm.

All the way back to his heart.

Rough fingers dig in beneath James’s collarbone, so tight he thinks it will break. He turns. He flails.

Not-Dak, Hawk’s man, is framed by the rundown skyline of Verona, Spanish tile and white-grey concrete. It’s not just him; there’s a whole regiment.

James’s toes curl in his shoes.

He tucks his fear down more deeply, hides it someplace where no one in that forsaken city will ever see.

He can feel his ribs splinter under their fists.

At one point, he thinks Not-Dak asks him how he pleads. Or maybe he’s commenting about how much James bleeds.

It doesn’t matter.

“Guilty,” James spits the words, thick with blood. “Guilty, guilty.”

But he’d do it again, and again, and again. Of all the things he’s ever done, all the fights he’s won, and the songs he’s sang, Kendall is the best one.

“Guilty,” he sobs it, chokes on it, smiles crimson-toothed around the word.

The sky is a single pinprick of darkness now, the whole world swallowed up by the sea. He falls back into the ocean, the waves taking him under, and the faces of his attackers are shadows at his periphery. Kendall’s name is caught in his throat, a plea or an apology. Maybe a confession.

James tastes him on the coppery viscosity on his lips, in the lost sunlight, in the sea salt. He feels him, even with the water and blackened sky spiraling wildly overhead. The last thing he has to hold on to.

Kendall is the anchor at the heart of James. So deep he can never be rooted out.

James closes his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> It's 2017 and I'm still churning out BTR fic. I don't know what I'm doing with my life any more. 
> 
> ANYWAY. Thilia, you asked for it. I'm pretty sure this is NOT what you wanted, but uh. Please don't hate me? It's been a rough year, and I am extra maudlin. This is my only excuse.


End file.
